4 ms·

Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars), and honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned, like the US droppin

by soperj 6y ago

Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars), and honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned, like the US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan is. The Japanese committed vast atrocities in China, but they were never made to sit in a war crimes communal because the US thought the chemical warfare research was worthwhile knowing. Either way, what you grandfather did or didn't do doesn't make you a bad person, and reading it might give you reflection to make better choices in your life?

burkaman 6y ago
Don't know much about the history of this, but it seems like there were substantial war crimes tribunals in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#War_crime_trials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#War_crime_.... Almost a thousand executed, and thousands more given some prison time, including some very high ranking generals and politicians.
- soperj 6y ago
  Interesting! Thanks! I knew specifically about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 not getting tried by the Americans, didn't know the rest.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    I see, yeah it's not surprising there were exceptions. Obviously agree with your larger point that winners tend not to subject themselves to tribunals.
meowface 6y ago
>honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. "History is written by the victors" is one of the truest cliches. But whether crimes or atrocities are acknowledged or punished tells you nothing about the impact or severity of the actions. So, while one could certainly recite a laundry list of atrocities committed by the Allies which a victorious Nazi Germany would have prosecuted, and many by Imperial Japan that went unpunished (though you're wrong that none of them were charged with war crimes - many were, even if many others like Unit 731 escaped prosecution due to the US wanting their research [edit: I see someone else responded with this before I finished my reply]), WWII is difficult to write off as "everyone and everything was awful" like a lot of wars. Every side was indeed awful, but Nazi Germany's and Imperial Japan's actions in particular were so unprecedentedly awful that far-future generations in those countries probably would've eventually had a reckoning and realized they were the worst actors in the war, like what eventually happened in the US when it comes to treatment of Native Americans, propping up brutal dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, and other things. All this to say - if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity, for example, it can't and shouldn't be dismissed as "well, that's war, everyone is culpable, and you can't know what it was like to be in their shoes, and either side would be considered as evil if the other side won". (I know you didn't quite say that, but there is a certain false semi-equivalence here, I think.) It's not exactly wrong, but it misses a lot of the bigger picture.
- soperj 6y ago
  > if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity Britain and Belgium especially have this all over their history, and no one cares.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Wrt Britain what are you referring to particularly? I know all sorts of terrible things British people have done, and some 'we' are doing (selling weapons to people for murdering citizens, currently) but I've not heard of murder squads in Britain since the civil war??
    - meowface 6y ago
      I'm guessing they're mostly referring to the history of colonialism by imperial Britain and King Leopold of Belgium. I'm not sure anything was on the scale of the extent of the Nazi regime's worst actions (though Leopold wasn't far off), but there were certainly many atrocities.
      - secfirstmd 6y ago
        Oh my. Well just off the top of my head. The UK has committed widespread systematic war crimes/crimes against humanity for generations in Ireland (+ is responsible for the deaths of the famine), Kenya, India, South Africa and localised war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and many Asian countries. Bombing of Dresden also. To name but a few. Then you can probably argue forcing and dumping opium on China is another one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes Even today that are recent British war crimes where the perpetrators are alive and yet will never be prosecuted.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - soperj 6y ago
      Boer war for instance. Pretty well everyone in the concentration camps they had died.
vmception 6y ago
Agreed, a single market Europe is all the US cares about It doesn't care if its German run, Russian run (as long as it is market based and not marxist based), or “not-German” wink run like today It would have been tolerable just like Saudi Arabia is tolerable Liquidity, market depth, and less people to negotiate with is the American priority The moral highground arguments that it upholds now and in hindsight are just to continue deriving support from its own people, who culturally eat that shit up, but it can successfully package any moral argument for any scenario even if they are complete lies
- permo-w 6y ago
  that doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. The larger your bloc is, the stronger your negotiating position is. The stronger your negotiating position is, the more you can make the US pay for your goods and services It makes very little sense to want simpler negotiations in lieu of a strong negotiating position
  - vmception 6y ago
    Its the investors with a foothold in the US that want more markets. The country itself is a sideshow.
  - soperj 6y ago
    At the same time they use the countries within the bloc to avoid paying taxes.
shliachtx 6y ago
> Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars) I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable to most wars. Nazi Germany is viewed differently historically because it was different. That is not to say OP's grandfather is responsible for all of Nazi Germany's actions, but it is not just "lots of people did shitty things."
- soperj 6y ago
  >I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable to most wars. That wasn't the reason for the war. Nor were there any country actually try to help the jews before or during the war. It's also not different from thoughts at the time held throughout the western world. Britain specifically didn't help the jews during ww2 because they thought they would flood Palestine (a british colony) after the war. A famous quote in Canada before ww2 was that "We'd take as many as we can, but none was too much." America as well famously turned away boat loads of jews.
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    > Nor were there any country actually try to help the jews before or during the war. Depending on how you define "country" (as opposed to just "a large fraction or majority of its citizens"), Denmark did in fact help Jews, at least Danish ones. And the story of Bulgaria is .. complicated. Again, they protected Bulgarian Jews in practice. Portugal helped not only Portuguese Jews, but many others as well. In particular, they generally allowed a huge number of refugees (16% of the country's population), including Jews, into the country. It's true that the main Allied powers were not particularly going out of their way to help Jews, but "any country" is a high bar.
    - bruiseralmighty 6y ago
      Saving the Jews was not on any country's radar entering WWII. It was only afterwards that evidence of holocaust was discovered.
grayclhn 6y ago
JFC, I agree that the poster’s not responsible for his grandfather’s sins, but let’s not literally “both sides” the literal Nazis. Edit: “sins” -> “war crimes”
mshanowitz 6y ago
Indeed, however there was something uniquely terrible about the Nazi atrocities. The Nazis invaded countries and then systematically got to the task of murdering their entire totally harmless Jewish population, simply because of their ethnicity. There was no possible military or tribal gain or anything, it was just pure racial hatred. What's especially horrifying is that Germany was a very advanced civilization using sophisticated and systematic means to accomplish this.
- soperj 6y ago
  They really aren't unique. It's happened in many many different places. It honestly is just what humans are capable of.

by soperj 6y ago

burkaman 6y ago

Don't know much about the history of this, but it seems like there were substantial war crimes tribunals in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#War_crime_trials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#War_crime_.... Almost a thousand executed, and thousands more given some prison time, including some very high ranking generals and politicians.

soperj 6y ago
Interesting! Thanks! I knew specifically about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 not getting tried by the Americans, didn't know the rest.
- burkaman 6y ago
  I see, yeah it's not surprising there were exceptions. Obviously agree with your larger point that winners tend not to subject themselves to tribunals.

meowface 6y ago

>honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. "History is written by the victors" is one of the truest cliches. But whether crimes or atrocities are acknowledged or punished tells you nothing about the impact or severity of the actions. So, while one could certainly recite a laundry list of atrocities committed by the Allies which a victorious Nazi Germany would have prosecuted, and many by Imperial Japan that went unpunished (though you're wrong that none of them were charged with war crimes - many were, even if many others like Unit 731 escaped prosecution due to the US wanting their research [edit: I see someone else responded with this before I finished my reply]), WWII is difficult to write off as "everyone and everything was awful" like a lot of wars. Every side was indeed awful, but Nazi Germany's and Imperial Japan's actions in particular were so unprecedentedly awful that far-future generations in those countries probably would've eventually had a reckoning and realized they were the worst actors in the war, like what eventually happened in the US when it comes to treatment of Native Americans, propping up brutal dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, and other things. All this to say - if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity, for example, it can't and shouldn't be dismissed as "well, that's war, everyone is culpable, and you can't know what it was like to be in their shoes, and either side would be considered as evil if the other side won". (I know you didn't quite say that, but there is a certain false semi-equivalence here, I think.) It's not exactly wrong, but it misses a lot of the bigger picture.

soperj 6y ago
> if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity Britain and Belgium especially have this all over their history, and no one cares.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Wrt Britain what are you referring to particularly? I know all sorts of terrible things British people have done, and some 'we' are doing (selling weapons to people for murdering citizens, currently) but I've not heard of murder squads in Britain since the civil war??
  - meowface 6y ago
    I'm guessing they're mostly referring to the history of colonialism by imperial Britain and King Leopold of Belgium. I'm not sure anything was on the scale of the extent of the Nazi regime's worst actions (though Leopold wasn't far off), but there were certainly many atrocities.
    - secfirstmd 6y ago
      Oh my. Well just off the top of my head. The UK has committed widespread systematic war crimes/crimes against humanity for generations in Ireland (+ is responsible for the deaths of the famine), Kenya, India, South Africa and localised war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and many Asian countries. Bombing of Dresden also. To name but a few. Then you can probably argue forcing and dumping opium on China is another one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes Even today that are recent British war crimes where the perpetrators are alive and yet will never be prosecuted.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - soperj 6y ago
    Boer war for instance. Pretty well everyone in the concentration camps they had died.

vmception 6y ago

Agreed, a single market Europe is all the US cares about It doesn't care if its German run, Russian run (as long as it is market based and not marxist based), or “not-German” wink run like today It would have been tolerable just like Saudi Arabia is tolerable Liquidity, market depth, and less people to negotiate with is the American priority The moral highground arguments that it upholds now and in hindsight are just to continue deriving support from its own people, who culturally eat that shit up, but it can successfully package any moral argument for any scenario even if they are complete lies

permo-w 6y ago
that doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. The larger your bloc is, the stronger your negotiating position is. The stronger your negotiating position is, the more you can make the US pay for your goods and services It makes very little sense to want simpler negotiations in lieu of a strong negotiating position
- vmception 6y ago
  Its the investors with a foothold in the US that want more markets. The country itself is a sideshow.
- soperj 6y ago
  At the same time they use the countries within the bloc to avoid paying taxes.

shliachtx 6y ago

> Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars) I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable to most wars. Nazi Germany is viewed differently historically because it was different. That is not to say OP's grandfather is responsible for all of Nazi Germany's actions, but it is not just "lots of people did shitty things."

soperj 6y ago
>I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable to most wars. That wasn't the reason for the war. Nor were there any country actually try to help the jews before or during the war. It's also not different from thoughts at the time held throughout the western world. Britain specifically didn't help the jews during ww2 because they thought they would flood Palestine (a british colony) after the war. A famous quote in Canada before ww2 was that "We'd take as many as we can, but none was too much." America as well famously turned away boat loads of jews.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  > Nor were there any country actually try to help the jews before or during the war. Depending on how you define "country" (as opposed to just "a large fraction or majority of its citizens"), Denmark did in fact help Jews, at least Danish ones. And the story of Bulgaria is .. complicated. Again, they protected Bulgarian Jews in practice. Portugal helped not only Portuguese Jews, but many others as well. In particular, they generally allowed a huge number of refugees (16% of the country's population), including Jews, into the country. It's true that the main Allied powers were not particularly going out of their way to help Jews, but "any country" is a high bar.
  - bruiseralmighty 6y ago
    Saving the Jews was not on any country's radar entering WWII. It was only afterwards that evidence of holocaust was discovered.

grayclhn 6y ago

JFC, I agree that the poster’s not responsible for his grandfather’s sins, but let’s not literally “both sides” the literal Nazis. Edit: “sins” -> “war crimes”

mshanowitz 6y ago

Indeed, however there was something uniquely terrible about the Nazi atrocities. The Nazis invaded countries and then systematically got to the task of murdering their entire totally harmless Jewish population, simply because of their ethnicity. There was no possible military or tribal gain or anything, it was just pure racial hatred. What's especially horrifying is that Germany was a very advanced civilization using sophisticated and systematic means to accomplish this.

soperj 6y ago
They really aren't unique. It's happened in many many different places. It honestly is just what humans are capable of.